March 1887 — Hired as a columnist and editorial writer for San Francisco Examiner by William Randolph Hearst. His column "Prattle" begins in the Examiner on March 27, 1887. Starts publishing his Civil War stories in the Examiner.

1888 — Separates from Mollie. Moves to Sunol, California.

Jul 16, 1889 — Day Bierce, 17, involved in a love triangle in Chico, California, shoots and kills his rival, then himself.

1889 — Meets novelist Gertrude Atherton.

1891 — Publishes his first book of fiction containing his most famous stories, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (E.I.G. Steele), reprinted in London as In The Midst of Life (1892).

Oct 1892 — Rewrites a long fable translated from the German by Adolphe Danziger, The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter (Schulte & Co., Chicago), the closest Bierce comes to a novel.

Jan 1896 — Sent to Washington by William Randolph Hearst to muckrake against a bill to excuse the debt owed to the government by Collis P. Huntington and the railroads. Refuses to shake Huntington's hand at a congressional hearing. Bierce and the Examiner are credited for defeating the "railrogues."

Dec 1896 — Returns to Los Gatos.

Dec 1896 — Putnams publishes revised and expanded version of Tales as Soldiers and Civilians as In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians.

Jan 1899 — Publishes Fantastic Fables (Putnam's, NY).

Dec 1899 — Moves to Washington, DC, to continue writing for William Randolph Hearst, stopping en route to visit son Leigh, a reporter for the New York Telegraph.

Mar 31, 1901 — Leigh Bierce, 26, dies in New York of pneumonia after catching cold during a drunken spree.

Sep 6, 1901 — After President McKinley is murdered, critics of Hearst exhume a quatrain published by Bierce in the Examiner that seems to urge McKinley's assassination, an issue said to have contributed to Hearst's failure at election to high office.

Oct 24, 1913 — Arrives in New Orleans. Is interviewed by a reporter for the States in which Bierce is quoted as saying "I'm on my way to Mexico because I like the game."

Oct 27, 1913 — Arrives in San Antonio, visits Fort Sam Houston.

Nov 6, 1913 — Writes his niece from Laredo, Texas, "...don't know where I shall be next. Guess it doesn't matter much. Adios." Visits Fort McIntosh on the banks of the Rio Grande.

Nov 28 1913 — Crosses the International Bridge between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on horseback, reportedly carrying two-thousand dollars in gold (the theories about this vary), ostensibly to connect with Pancho Villa.

Dec 26, 1913 — Writes a letter from Chihuahua, Mexico, to his secretary/companion, Carrie Christiansen, saying he expects to move out the next day, partly by rail, to Ojinaga, where Pancho Villa's revolutionaries are poised to attack federal troops. This is the last communication from Bierce.

Jan 1, 1914 — Pancho Villa captures Ojinaga.

1914 — Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, forms an investigative team to look into Bierce's disappearance but comes up with nothing. Bierce's daughter, Helen, launches an investigation under the direction of Colonel C. J. Velardi. Again, with no results.

Mar 1920 — The San Francisco Bulletin sends reporter James H. Wilkins to Mexico to find out what happened to Bierce, and publishes a sensational story claiming that Bierce was shot by a Villa firing squad near Icamoli in 1915.

1929 — Adolphe Danziger (who changed his name to Adolphe De Castro) claims to have personally interviewed Villa several years before, and suggests that Villa ordered Bierce shot because the gringo drank too much tequila (NOTE: Danziger is not credible).

1929 — Biographer Carey McWilliams quotes Edward S. O'Reilly, a soldier of fortune, as saying Ambrose Bierce was buried near Sierra Mojada after having been shot by local soldiers. NOTE: See Aug 2004 (below) for a credible theory by James Lienert giving credence to McWilliams' 1929 account.

1929 — Three biographies and a bibliography of Bierce are published:

Ambrose Bierce: A Biography. Carey McWilliams, New York [which to this day remains the most illuminating of all the biographies]

Bitter Bierce. C. Hartley Grattan, Garden City

Portrait of Ambrose Bierce. Adolphe de Castro, New York

Ambrose Bierce, a Bibliography. Vincent Starrett, Philadelphia

1929 — The Bridge, a silent film version of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," is released. Written and directed by Charles Vidor. Reissued as The Spy.

1932 — Gertrude Atherton publishes Adventures of a Novelist, which is heavily focused on her relationship with Bierce.

1942 — The Limited Editions Club republishes Tales of Soldiers and Civilians with wood-engravings by Paul Landacre.

Feb 2002 — Jacob Silverstein in Harper's Magazine reports an elderly native of Marfa, Texas, learned second-hand that Bierce died of pneumonia and was buried in a common grave in a Marfan cemetery. Improbable.

Mar 2002 — Kronos Quartet and the American Conservatory Theater premier an opera in San Francisco based on the Bierce story "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field."

May 2002 — World premier of "The Mocking Bird," an opera based on a Bierce story, composed by Thea Musgrave. Boston Musica Viva.

Jun 2002 — Ohio Bicentennial Commission first puts on hold plan to honor Bierce with a historical marker after dispute over his birthsite, but finds sufficient evidence to proceed with the project.

Aug 21, 2002 — "Bitter Bierce," Mac Wellman's mixed-media version of Bierce's life and works, debuts in New York.

2003 — A Much Misunderstood Man: Selected Letters of Ambrose Bierce, edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, Ohio State University Press (Columbus, OH).

2003 — Graphic Classics issues an illustrated collection of Bierce stories in comic-strip form by more than 40 such artists, such as Gahan Wilson.

Jun 21, 2003 — Premier of a new film version of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Ann Arbor, Michigan. Directed by Brian James Egen.

Nov 6, 2003 — Dedication of the first formal recognition of Ambrose Bierce: a marker on the grounds of Eastern High School, Route 7, Meigs County, Ohio, near his birth place. Earlier, a plaque was placed at the close by historic Chester Courthouse to honor Bierce.

Aug 2004 — Retired priest James Lienert erects a gravestone to Bierce in Sierra Mojada, Coahuila, Mexico, where Lienert draws upon local lore to theorize Bierce is buried in the local cemetery.

Mar 2005 — Principal photography completed on Mike Barton's independent short film "The Eyes of the Panther," based on a Bierce short story.

Oct 2005 — Don Maxwell's short film version of Bierce's "One Kind of Officer," scheduled for release in 2006, is previewed in Kansas City.

Oct 2005 — Cover story, Civil War Times.

May 2006 — Tobe Hooper tapped to direct Bierce's "The Damned Thing" for Showtime cable network, which airs in October.

January 2007 — The Short Fiction of Ambrose Bierce, a monumental three-volume work published by the University of Tennessee Press. Edited by S.T. Joshi, Lawrence I. Berkove, David E. Schultz. First comprehensive collection of Bierce's short fiction 1868-1910.

2007 — Leon Day publishes (on The Ambrose Bierce Site) the near book-length story of his effort to find the grave of Ambrose Bierce.

September 2007 — Production begins on Mauriel Joslyn's film adaptation of Bierce's short story "Horseman in the Sky."

March 2008 — Production completed of Leor Baum's short film based on the Ambrose Bierce story "The Moonlit Road."

March 2008 — Performance at Western Michigan University of composer Samuel Douglas' "Bierce Songs: Definitions from the Devil's Dictionary."

2009 — Jan Freeman publishes the first annotated and deciphered version of Ambrose Bierce's Write It Right.

March 2010 — Actor Johnny Depp produces a music-video, "Unloveable," based on "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Performed by Stephen Jones of the British rock band Babybird.

2011 — The first definitive account of Bierce's relationship with H.L. Mencken, "Ambrose and Henry" by Don Swaim, fills the entire spring issue of the quarterlyMenckeniana, published by the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore.

April 2013 — The Centipede Press publishes: Ambrose Bierce: Masters of the Weird Tale, edited by S.T. Joshi, illustrated by Jason C. Eckhardt, a 560-page collection of Bierce's best Civil War and supernatural tales.

January 9, 2014 — The Ambrose Bierce Site succumbs to social pressure and launches a Bierce Facebook Group to replace its old message board, and after nine months attracts 250 members. Bierce Facebook Group

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compiled by Don Swaim

Please credit The Ambrose Bierce Site if you use any part of this chronology. The primary sources for this chronology consisted of Ambrose Bierce: A Biography by Carey McWilliams (Albert and Charles Boni 1929); Bitter Bierce by C. Hartley Grattan (Doubleday, Doran) 1929; Life of Ambrose Bierce by Walter Neale (Walter Neale, Publisher) 1929; Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Lexicographer by Paul Fatout (University of Oklahoma Press) 1951; Letters of Ambrose Bierce, The edited by Bertha Clark Pope (Gordian Press) 1967; Ambrose Bierce: A Biography by Richard O'Connor (Victor Gollancz 1968); Ambrose Bierce: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schulz (Greenwood Press 1999).